Singapore Slingshot

Recently I wrote the following for a great Slovak bar magazine, entitled appropriately enough, Bar Magazine. Occasionally Stanislav will contact me and ask me to create a recipe for him in the “molecular mixology style” that will fit in with the magazine’s theme of the month. This month the theme was Singapore Slings.

The Singapore Sling’s original recipe has always been one of speculation, but I’ve always been a fan of the one found in Robert Vermiere’s, Cocktails and How to Mix Them (1922), which holds true to the definition of a Sling with gin, Benedictine, cherry brandy, lemon juice, soda water, Angostura bitters and orange bitters as its ingredients. It should be noted that there were no Sling recipes with a juice other than lemon or lime in it before 1921, and therefore I eschew any recipe that calls for pineapple, orange or any other flavour of juice as a component in this venerable libation.

Today we are going to play around with the concept of the Singapore Sling, as many before me have, by offering up a “shooter”-sized recipe that has a twist: we are going to use some basic molecular mixology techniques to add visual and textural interest.

CHERRY HEERING CAVIAR
3 oz Cherry Heering
1 oz water
1 oz lemon juice
¼ oz sodium alginate
mix all ingredients together with an immersion blender
let sit for 5 minutes
place in plastic bag and vacuum seal
release seal and place mixture into a plastic squeeze bottle
drop small balls of mixture one by one into a calcium chloride bath
rinse with Cherry Heering when set
store in a 1:1 Cherry Heering/water bath

BENEDICTINE CAVIAR
4 oz Benedictine
1 oz water
¼ oz sodium alginate
mix all ingredients together with an immersion blender
let sit for 5 minutes
place in plastic bag and vacuum seal
release seal and place mixture into a plastic squeeze bottle
drop small balls of mixture one by one into a calcium chloride bath
rinse with Benedictine when set
store in a 1:1 Benedictine /water bath

You may notice that the Slingshot possesses all of the flavours of the original Sling: Benedictine and cherry in the form of bursting caviar, lemon juice in the form of the candied lemon wedge, and we’ve carbonated the gin and bitters with the Perlini cocktail system to give one the illusion of soda water, but with the alcoholic punch of a shot.

The Perlini is a fantastic system that acts as a cocktail shaker, but also allows one to carbonate the ingredients within. This allows me to not only carbonate the gin mixture, but also allows me to chill and properly dilute it, ensuring that the shot is indeed a pleasant one.

The proper way to imbibe the Slingshot would be to take a bite of the candied lemon, followed by a large sip of the shooter, thus ensuring that you have the sensation of lemon on your palate when you consume the liquid portion of the drink.

modern serf:
The Perlini is a prototype shaker that will hopefully be available to the general public within a year. As stated above, it is a cocktail shaker (3-piece Cobbler style) that allows you to carbonate the ingredients before you shake and strain.

mrmanhattan:
It is my experience that the concentration of calcium chloride does not matter. What matters is time and concentration. Think of the calcium chloride as heat and the higher the concentration, the less time it takes for you to “cook”. The lower the concentration the longer it takes.
The vacuum is merely to remove the air bubbles. If you blend and immediately drop the mixture into the bath, there will be so much air in the caviar that it will all immediately float to the top of the solution. I want the caviar to “dance” in the glass, so I remove the air bubbles.

dwinship:
Read above, for most of the answers to your questions. As for the storing solution, I’ve found that I can usually store caviar for up to 4 days before too much flavour has leached out. A higher concentration will allow for a bit more time, but I find that I’ve always used all of my caviar within four days, hence the 1:1.

santafebarman:
I think that I purchased my chemicals from chefrubber.com, but there are many sources available on the web.

Thanks for the reply. I get what you’re saying but have to assume that below a certain concentration the drop won’t set fast enough and the liqueur-alginate mixture will disperse. Can you just tell me how many grams of Calcium Chloride per liter you used to make your caviar? That would be greatly appreciated.

Re sodium alginate hydration, I assume you first dissolved the SA in water prior to adding the alcohol. Also your Per. of SA is about 5%, I usually use .5 to .9. I wonder what was the reason for that – higher concentration will jellify more the solution, nothing wrong with that, but I was wondering, have you tried to make ravioli, are they liquid in the center.

Caviar are not Ravioli and will of course need different concentrations. Different alcohol and the presence of acids will also make a difference in caviar %’s as I’m sure you are aware. Caviar are so small that I’m not concerned about whether they are liquid or jelly inside, but rather how long their shelf life is.

Hi, I went to chef rubber and it costs a bomb to deliver to singapore ($32 for chemicals and $68 for fedex economy AND a $5 handling charge!!). Have you managed to find a local suplier for SA and Calc Lactate/chloride yet?